CodalSearch this book — or all of Codal…⌘K
nydus/Life and Letters of Charles Darwin — Volume 1Public

This volume presents a collection of Charles Darwin's personal correspondence, organized primarily by the subjects of his research and publications. The letters are supplemented by excerpts from his diary to provide a chronological framework for his professional career and personal character.

Page 591 of 696
Table of Contents

CHAPTER 1.XII. — THE UNFINISHED BOOK.

I find horses of various colours often have a spinal band or stripe of different and darker tint than the rest of the body; rarely transverse bars on the legs, generally on the under-side of the front legs, still more rarely a very faint transverse shoulder-stripe like an ass.

Is there any breed of Delamere forest ponies? I have found out little about ponies in these respects. Sir P. Egerton has, I believe, some quite thoroughbred chestnut horses; have any of them the spinal stripe? Mouse-coloured ponies, or rather small horses, often have spinal and leg bars. So have dun horses (by dun I mean real colour of cream mixed with brown, bay, or chestnut). So have sometimes chestnuts, but I have not yet got a case of spinal stripe in chestnut, race horse, or in quite heavy cart-horse. Any fact of this nature of such stripes in horses would be MOST useful to me. There is a parallel case in the legs of the donkey, and I have collected some most curious cases of stripes appearing in various crossed equine animals. I have also a large mass of parallel facts in the

591